Sherlock Loses 8 Mins An Episode

It has been known for a while that PBS has been editing down BBC’s “Sherlock” for its second season broadcast this month in the United States. Now it has been revealed just how deep those cuts are.

Executive producer Sue Vertrue recently spoke to The Independent and revealed that PBS has sliced episodes of the show down from 90 minutes to 82 minutes to make room for sponsor ads – as a result almost half an hour of scenes (nearly 10% of the series) across the three episodes are being lost to American viewers.

“We had to cut eight minutes. The PBS episodes have to be 82 minutes because of sponsors announcements. It breaks your heart. We try to cut the bits which aren’t essential to the story but they are often the lovely character scenes. We’ll see if we can avoid it next time” says Vertrue.

The U.S. DVD and Blu-ray release of the season, due out this month, is expected to contain the full unedited versions.